> ICH5 SATA and SiI3112 are the only affected chipsets.> You don't have to enable libata drivers for them or their> PCI IDs can be removed from the libata drivers if needed.

Hmm, do you mean that existent SATA drives on current 2.4.x kernels where "seen" as /dev/hdX and with the SATA merge will be /dev/sdX ? I dont think 2.4.x supported SATA (at least not on Intel). I have a ICH5 motherboard with one PATA drive and one SATA drive. With 2.6.5 kernel with support for IDE PIIX (in the ATA section) and SATA PIIX (in the SCSI low level drivers section) I see my PATA as /dev/hda and my SATA as /dev/sdb (I have another SCSI disk on a SCSI controller which is /dev/sda). So it does seem to me to do the right thing. Also on 2.4.25 with PIIX support I only saw the PATA disk. In BIOS the PATA/SATA configuration is set to "Enhanced". More informations: